


Someone With The Skills To Intervene

by Jedi Buttercup (jedibuttercup)



Category: Dresden Files - Jim Butcher, Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Crossover, Episode: s01e19 Flesh and Blood, Feels, Gen, POV First Person, Wordcount: 5.000-10.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-08
Updated: 2015-11-21
Packaged: 2017-11-03 06:14:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/378211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jedibuttercup/pseuds/Jedi%20Buttercup
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"So what is it about this Elias character that requires Wardenly intervention?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Dresden

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fiona_nk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fiona_nk/gifts).



> Plot impetus inspired by the episode, "Flesh and Blood". I just could _not_ resist. Circa but pre-"Changes" for Dresden Files timeline. Fourth and final chapter added as a gift-fic. :)

Some days, I have to wonder whether my entire life has just been a setup to prepare me for some future disaster that no one's seen fit to fill me in on. The world gets darker every year; and every year, more and more of the fallout spills into my backyard, like a graduated series of obstacles in one of those adventure games. You know the type: _you have entered a maze of twisty little passages, all alike_. I may not be able to play them, but I'm very familiar with the culture of geek.

And then, some days I get thrown a curveball like this one. PLUGH.

"You've got to be kidding," I said, dog-earing my latest pulp paperback distraction and dropping it on my desk. I wouldn't bother doing that for just any ridiculous phone call-- you wouldn't believe how many prank calls I field from people taking my ad in the yellow pages as a joke-- but in this case, one way or another, I had a feeling I wouldn't be getting back my space operatic adventure any time soon. "Why would you think I'd want to do _anything_ that would benefit the Mafia?"

Completely aside from the fact that organized crime typically operates on a mundane, not preternatural level, which takes them out of my sphere of influence both as a Warden of the White Council and as a Wizardly private investigator, I _detest_ professional criminals and the profit they make from human misery. No one has the right to live off another's unwilling subjugation, as far as I'm concerned, and these days my _concern_ stretches pretty damned far.

I do occasionally manage to be civil to Gentleman Johnnie Marcone, because he _has_ carved out his own seat of power on the supernatural stage, and he's proven he can be trusted to a point during several of the aforementioned twisty passages. There are lines he refuses to cross, and sometimes the devil you know is the only tool left in the box that'll get the job done. But Marcone was Chicago-based, not New York, and I wasn't interested in doing favors for any of his even less palatable peers.

"Do you really think I'm asking on behalf of the Five Families?" the rough, masculine voice on the other end of the line replied.

I sucked my teeth for a second, considering. I hadn't thought so, particularly considering Kincaid's usual day job; there was no way the Cosa Nostra could outbid the Archive. But then again, I had reason to know the Archive wasn't allowed to take sides. So she couldn't be the one asking me to intervene.

"You know I'd do anything for Ivy," I finally said, "but it doesn't make any sense. What's her interest?"

"Officially, she doesn't have one," Kincaid replied. "Officially, she doesn't know I'm calling you. But one of her Master Archivists has chosen a very inopportune time to step out of his library."

"And he's in this ambitious guy's path," I concluded. So it was more that _Kincaid_ was asking me to do this, so Ivy wouldn't have to fret about it. Which meant she must really like the guy, if Kincaid wanted to spend the favor I currently owed him to take out a warmongering mob boss in a city neither of us lived in.

"That's about the size of it, Dresden," he said.

Ivy didn't have many friends, that I knew of. Hells bells, she hadn't even had a _name_ to call her own before I'd met her. She had her Hellhound, Kincaid; she had me; and I suspected, but tried not to think about the fact, that she also had a piece of Marcone after their imprisonment together at the hands of a really nasty set of demonic baddies. Most people seemed to fear that if the repository of all human knowledge developed emotions and preferences, she would become _dangerous_ to everyone else.

Well, fuck _that_. I wasn't in the habit of disappointing damsels in distress. Even if the distress was only emotional, the damsel in question could kick my ass six ways from Sunday with the tiniest flick of her fingers, and she already had the deadliest gunman I'd ever met on her payroll. She couldn't ask _him_ without violating the Archive's limitations. But he was asking me; so, I was in.

Though that was another interesting question. Why _was_ he asking me, and not, say, Marcone? Favor or not, I'm sure the Baron of Chicago would have leapt at the opportunity to expand his power, and it's not like _Kincaid_ would quail at the thought of letting the trash take out the trash.

"So what is it about this Elias character that makes him such a threat to five established Mafia dons-- and one, what is it that a Master Archivist does, anyway-- that requires Wardenly intervention?"

Kincaid snorted. "He does what it sounds like: collects information."

 _Duh_. I knew _that_ much. Knowledge is quite _literally_ power in the Archive's case. Ivy magically knows everything that has ever been written down; no need to mail her letters, I just had to pick up a pen. But if it had already been written down somewhere, she'd already know it. "What, like a recorder of oral history?"

"Better." He sounded amused, now. "Harold invented social media."

Ah: one of modern society's more insidious tools to get people to voluntarily share information about _themselves_. I didn't get the appeal, myself-- but then, it was impossible for me to even be in the same _room_ as a computer when I was in a temper without accidentally frying it. Maybe one day, if they ever invented a hex proof iTablet or something, I'd give it a try.

...Of course, if they did, _Bob_ would probably demand one in lieu of his next bodice ripper, and _that_ \-- no. Bob's like a downsized version of the Archive, powered by an Air spirit and bound into a human skull rather than actually inhabiting a person, and 'social networking' is his absolute favorite form of entertainment. He'd be _all over_ the gossipy, always at your fingertips version, which was reason enough for me to never so much as think about creating a profile.

"Which is something that by its nature currently excludes the White Council," I pointed out. "I reiterate the question: why ask a wizard for help?"

"Elias has a few practitioners on his payroll," Kincaid replied with a verbal shrug. "He's risen faster than your friend the Baron with a hell of a lot more collateral damage. And New York's in your territory, _Commander_. The Fae aren't involved, but the vampire Courts have their fingerprints all over him."

Damn. Black, Red, or White, it was a sure bet more twisty passages _were_ involved, then-- and while I'd usually pity any idiot human who trod those toothy waters, I wasn't going to count out a man who sounded like Marcone minus the scruples. It might even be worth calling Ramirez for backup. 

"All right. I know a Way into the city; I can be there tonight. Where's this Archivist holed up?"

He gave me an address, brusque now that I'd agreed, and I scribbled it down on the inside cover of my paperback-- I was out of notepaper. "Call you again when I've got the lay of the land."

"Good," he said. Then he chuckled, a distinctly ominous sound. "Be sure you announce you're on Archival matters before you say anything else, though. He's a paranoid bastard. Good with veils. And his new bodyguard has... let's just say, _potential_."

Before I could ask what he meant by _that_ , the Hellhound hung up.

I sighed, muttering under my breath, and closed up my office. Knowing my luck, I was sure to find out soon enough.


	2. Reese

I'd known from the start that there was something a little... different... about Finch.

Well, maybe not from the _very_ start. I'd been too caught up in my own pain to really pay much attention to the telltales when he'd first approached me. That was half the point of the alcohol, after all, during those long months after Ordos and the emptied Arndt house when all I wanted was to disappear: it blurred everything else down far enough that I could almost pretend none of it existed, either. But in the morning, after I woke ziptied to the headboard to an imperious phone call and the sounds of recorded terror? There was no mistaking the tingle of energy under his skin when I broke into the next room and pressed an arm against his throat.

I'm not a practitioner, myself. I suspect that if I was, I'd have ended up in an entirely separate branch of government service. I'm simply... sensitive to such things. Many field intelligence operatives are in these darkening days; we're the ones most likely to survive high risk missions to far flung locales where the shadows still reign, and also, perhaps not surprisingly, a much higher percentage of those recruited after the collapse of the Twin Towers than those before. By our very perceptiveness, we're less likely to tolerate the gradual downward spiral of the world around us without trying to do something about it.

Of course, not everyone with the eyes to see uses that knowledge in a _constructive_ manner. The job Finch and I do would not be nearly so necessary if they did.

Finch, though: it only took that one touch for me to tell he was something more. Not by much; his presence didn't seem to be enough to disrupt electronics, one of the major warning signs I'd learned to look for in humans with preternatural abilities. Nor did he have trouble meeting my eyes, and he displayed none of the various traits that might signify a _non_ human predator. He simply... shone, with a flickering, liminal energy, if I looked at him just right. But it was what he _did_ with that trickle of magic that made him so dangerous, not his weight class.

Even drunk, there was no way an ordinary man could have cuffed me to my bed without waking me. 

Finch is a _supernaturally_ sneaky son of a bitch, virtually unnoticeable when he exerts his power, and I'd have recognized that even if I hadn't been cornered by a concerned third party the week after I took out the trash for Megan Tillman. Tall, blond and mercenary stalked me deliberately enough to make it clear he could kill me at a distance if he chose, then led me into the Lyric Diner and sat at the same table I'd last eaten at with Finch. And then he asked about my _intentions_. 

A lot of people have asked me what the hell I thought I was doing, over the years. Few have ever set my nerves to crawling as much as Kincaid did, that evening. I'm skilled, but at the end of the day I'm still just a guy with a gun-- and I could tell, even more clearly than with Finch, that Kincaid was something _other_.

 _He means something to someone very important to me_ , he told me: _keep that in mind_.

 _I have nothing left to lose that Finch hasn't given me_ , I told him in turn: _you'll have to trust me when I say he means something to me now, too._

What that something was would undoubtedly shift over time-- but I expected it would exist in some form or another until the day one of us died, and I had no doubt Kincaid could see that in me as clearly as I could see the banked menace lurking in his shadow.

The conversation didn't last much longer. He left, and I never caught sight of him again. Nor did any of our cases afterward deal with overt preternatural activity-- yet another sign that Finch had a foot in that world as well as the one I'd been born to. The literal monsters are just as capable of premeditation as those who wear human skins, but none of them ever came up in connection with a Number. Whether Finch was simply concealing them, or the mysterious Machine had been programmed to filter them out, the end result was the same. Any supernatural activity I discovered was dealt with on my own time.

I assumed that was part of the reason things had gone so wrong with Elias; by the time we encountered him, I had already internalized that sharp divide. Pattern and routine are deadly to men with my skillset, and I hadn't even noticed how comfortable I was becoming with my new job. When Finch called, I cast myself into the gap between human law and real justice; and when he didn't, I left out bread and milk for the tiny wyldfae to discourage them from mischief, ran off minor predators from the other side, dragged vampire victims-- the bled kind _and_ the soul-damaged kind, though the latter were less likely to cooperate-- to addiction clinics, and referred anyone I couldn't directly help to the new paranormal network some optimistic soul set up a few years back.

Charlie Burton seemed as normal as I was. And in fact, he was just that; Carl Elias has no ability himself. But he knows it when he sees it, and he has no fear; he offers them what they want, and they offer what he wants in return. The money for his meteoric ascent comes from Court coffers-- and he has practitioners enough around him to ensure he comes out on top in any given conflict. Until the day he doesn't-- until his patrons have wrung every last drop of usefulness from him-- that won't change.

Without more powerful assistance, Finch and I were spitting into the wind trying to stop him. He knew it, Elias knew it-- and even I had to admit it, after the debacle with Leila. It took all the credit I had to arrange for my apartment, the library and Carter's house to be warded against threats less overt than a bullet; I knew no feasible way to protect the five Mafia dons whose numbers came up in response to Elias' rise, and from his continued silence on the subject, Finch didn't either.

We needed help. We didn't have it. But I didn't intend to let that stop me.

Fortunately-- for a loose definition of the term-- help arrived just before we set out to eavesdrop on the dons' monthly meeting.

Not that it looked like it at first glance. My first introduction to Harry Dresden was the sight of a lean, shaggy haired man about a head taller than I was, shrouded in a heavy leather trench coat and gray cloak, at the library doors. He wouldn't meet our eyes, he wore more rings than Jessica had had in her entire jewelry box-- and he carried himself like a man braced to defy hurricane force winds. He simply spread empty hands at my stare and declared he was "visiting on Archival matters." 

Finch stared for several seconds from the dim shade of the building, then nodded in return, lips thinned. "I am perfectly capable of looking after myself," he replied. "I left her personal service more than a decade ago. I don't need her charity."

Dresden looked momentarily surprised, eyebrows lifting; then shook his head, eyes flickering over Finch's careful stance. "You left her _grandmother's_ service. And don't think I don't understand why. But Ivy still counts you among her Master Archivists; you haven't stopped doing the job. Besides, it isn't charity, it's pragmatism. This city is part of my territory, and the last thing I need is a mortal lord out here bowing and scraping to the Courts."

Finch's face froze as Dresden started speaking, and I felt an unexpected, sympathetic clench of pain in my chest. I knew that paralytic degree of grief. It was more than the loss of someone important; I knew Finch had experienced _that_ around the same time I did, from the few threads I'd managed to unearth about his past. This was something older and deeper: the hollow left behind when an entire life is unexpectedly shaken from its foundations and left in ruins.

Perhaps that was the secret of his more recent recovery; of his ability to think outside himself, construct a scheme to help others, and give someone in equal straits a hand up while I still lacked the will to do more than simply exist. He'd experienced its like before.

Finch gave our visitor a wan, wry smile, and shook his head, breaking the thorny mood. "Ivy," he said. "So they gave her a name, after all. That's-- that's good. When I severed my ties, they were still determined to keep her isolated from all personal contact."

"Yeah, well, they left her Kincaid," Dresden shrugged, casually throwing out the name as though he associated with people of that mercenary's caliber on a regular basis. "And I met them when she was-- about seven? I didn't care what the Council thought, I wasn't about to go around calling her _The Archive_ just on their say-so. You should see her with my cat, or a box of art supplies; she's definitely more than just a collection of data."

Finch's expression softened further, even as I tensed, dropping a hand to my concealed weapon; clearly, this Ivy's welfare meant a lot to him. "All right, then," he said, turning to head inside. "Be welcome, Mr. Dresden. Come in, and we'll fill you in on what we know."

Dresden eyed my posture consideringly as he followed. "Kincaid said you had potential," he said. "I think I see what he meant."

 _Different_ , it seemed, was an understatement for Finch's role in the magical world, and he'd told me nothing about it.

A headache started throbbing at my temple as I fell in behind him. It was going to be a very long day, I could already tell.


	3. Finch

The day Mr. Dresden appeared on the front steps of the Library, it had been more than a decade since my last overt involvement in the supernatural world.

I have always led something of a partitioned life, separating identity from purpose as thoroughly as I can, the better to preserve both. That is undoubtedly why I first came to the attention of the Archive; it is certainly the reason I ended up serving four generations of its avatars in one capacity or another.

The Archive has, over the course of its existence, learned to keep its hosts-- including future hosts, when possible-- distanced from excesses of feeling; to do otherwise is dangerous for an extremely powerful entity with thousands of years' worth of memories, augmented by the emotions of each successive life it has lived. The first avatar of the Archive I encountered was a coolly remote individual, eminently logical, endlessly observant; her abilities enabled her to know more about me than any other being in existence, but rather than experiencing fear at that revelation, I was awed by it. I had spent many years imagining a thinking, learning machine; in meeting the Archive, I knew that I would only be creating a poor copy of what magic had done before me. But that did not discourage me; if anything, it made me more determined to build an Archive for the _mundane_ world.

The idea of using its information to act... came somewhat later. The Archive, after all, is bound to neutrality; the Machine, as it evolved, developed quite another purpose. But the bulk of its design, the comprehensiveness of its learning algorithms, its uncrackable integrity, can be traced back to that inspiration.

I took her offer of employment gladly. Her heir, then my age, was the closest I have ever come to a sister of the mind. The arrangement the Archive proposed between us was perhaps inevitable; in any case, it did not interfere with my duties as a Master Archivist, nor my alternate existence as Harold Wren, even when the Archive passed and said heir inherited the mantle in her turn. Not until _her_ daughter-- never mine, though I do occasionally wonder if that would have made a difference-- fell in love, rebelling against the lack of passion she perceived in her mother's life. 

On its own, that might not have proved a significant problem... but for the untimely car accident that followed, leaving a young woman of seventeen, pregnant and alone, to bear the weight of the Archive. Having met Grace, and John, and having lost Nathan, I understand her emotional state rather better now than I had at the time; but I fear I will never understand her reaction. Rather than watch her own daughter live the freedoms she had only just begun to grasp for herself, she chose to abdicate: to pass her burden to an infant not yet born. One whose first memory would necessarily be of her mother's last resentful breath.

I would have intervened then, if I could have. The newborn great-granddaughter of my first supernatural employer, the granddaughter of a woman I admired, in part my own flesh and blood: she was more than just the Archive to me, and my ability to compartmentalize had its limits even then. But I was not allowed. I was not even permitted to give her a name. And not even her bodyguard dared defy the White Council in the matter.

I shifted my identity to my primary alias the following day, and never once looked back.

...Or so I had told myself. The case of Leila Cruz had proved that a lie, digging deeply into old wounds. And to hear Mr. Dresden speak of the precious life I had been forced to abandon... to hear that at least two people in her life treated her like a human being, despite the White Council's best efforts to prevent that eventuality... I did not care what my face looked like, what I might be betraying by my reaction. I welcomed the gray-cloaked wizard into my sanctuary without further hesitation.

Mr. Dresden had been vetted by Kincaid, and introduced Ivy-- _Ivy_ \-- to his pet; whatever complications a Warden's interference might bring would be little enough to pay for such priceless intelligence. No matter how personal those complications might also become.

I had long known that John was aware of the supernatural; that had been part of the screening process the CIA used for those agents involved on the relevant end of the Machine's data, such awareness rendering them both more credulous regarding mysterious information sources and more able to follow the anonymous data to its conclusion. I had even suspected that he knew I had some connection to that world as well; abilities such as I have, however meager, are difficult to conceal entirely, and I had not always been careful in their use around him. But I had not spoken of my role in that world in all the months we'd worked together. Would he perceive that omission as a violation of my promise never to lie to him?

"Mr. Reese...." I began, eyeing him carefully as we headed for the Covenant Club, as previously planned, to observe the meeting of the heads of the Five Families. Mr. Dresden had his own contacts in the city to tap; it had not taken long to brief him on the threat posed by Elias and send him on his way with the intention of pursuing the problem from the less technological end, leaving John and I alone together once more.

"A Warden, Finch?" John cut me off, a note of warm amusement in his voice. "I knew there was more to you than met the eye, but I was under the impression that your, shall we say, less than explicable contacts were largely in the same line of work we are."

My eyebrows lifted. "I cannot imagine what may have given you that impression," I replied, taken aback. I had not maintained any contacts from my Archivist days, and had consistently brushed off the advances of the city's population of minor practitioners and inhuman residents. But he must have had some reason to make the connection.

"Oh? Then tall, blonde and deadly who stalked me for several days _wasn't_ a friend of yours?" he replied, his tone still light and unconcerned.

A cube of ice formed in my gut; I nearly stumbled, and was not mollified by the careful hand immediately at my elbow. " _Kincaid_?" I blurted, horrified. Not by the fact of the man's presence in New York; but by the fact that he'd been stalking _John_. When not in the immediate service of the Archive-- a 'day job' he occasionally referred to, oddly enough, as 'paying the Rent'-- the man known as the Hellhound was one of the world's deadliest assassins.

"So you _do_ know him," John replied, nodding calmly. "I thought as much, especially when your wizard mentioned him, too. Kind of a strange connection for a gray-cloak, though, as I said."

I gaped at him. "Mr. Dresden is hardly _my_ wizard," I objected. I'd entirely missed the fact that he had mentioned Kincaid's name, in fact, as stunned as I had been by his other news. "And it isn't so much that I know him, as that...." I trailed off, unsure how to explain.

"Hmmm," John mused, considering. He was enjoying my discomposure, I could tell by the crinkled lines around his eyes. "He _did_ say that you meant something to someone very important to him? Someone named Ivy, perhaps?"

"You _spoke_ with him?" I stopped walking, feeling slightly faint. Kincaid had threatened John on _my_ behalf? No-- he'd threatened John _about_ me, on _her_ behalf? It was almost too much to grasp. "And... if I may ask, what did you reply?"

The corner of John's mouth tucked up. "That I have nothing left to lose that you haven't given me," he shrugged.

I swallowed, and chose to address his earlier question. "When I was a part of that world, I worked for one of its neutral powers. Kincaid was... is, I suppose... her bodyguard. The current Archive... her grandmother was a very dear friend."

Something softened in John's face at that. "I see."

...I was beginning to believe that he did.

Whatever Kincaid reported to Ivy, whatever Mr. Dresden would tell her after this adventure... I wouldn't be able to maintain my distance any longer. The future trembled with magic, and with unexpected possibility; things I had thought left far behind by my own choices. I doubted I was ready to face the two halves of my existence finally colliding... but at least, it appeared, I would not be picking up the pieces alone.

"And John... nothing I had left had any meaning until I had someone else to give it to," I replied, gently.

Then we turned back to our mission. The Numbers-- especially _these_ Numbers-- would not save themselves, after all.


	4. Dresden

In the end, I didn't need to call Ramirez in on Kincaid's errand. Which was probably for the best, all things considered. Carl Elias did in fact have a very elaborate alliance going with both the underbelly of the NYPD and several Red Court thugs, but he'd forgotten to take a few things into account.

Or maybe it was just that his right hand man, a slick-looking gangster with a scar curving down from the outer corner of his right eye, had missed some ABCs in his magical education. Orphans raised in the school of hard knocks rarely come to the attention of the White Council in any constructive way, unless they're a lot more powerful than Scarface, and happen to get identified early on. He seemed to be a dab hand at magical explosions and less than legal methods of persuasion, but apparently wasn't aware of everything a well-crafted searching spell could do.

The knife I 'borrowed' from the police lockup that day didn't have Elias' blood on it, and had never been wielded in passion by his hands. But the last two people it had killed had been his mother and the man who'd killed _her_ : Elias had been obsessed with its function in his life for more than forty years. Wisps of his soul still clung to it from the last time he'd been in its proximity... and as I had good reason to know, you can do some truly spectacular things with only a little soul to work with.

I smiled grimly as I approached a boutique winery turned criminal hideaway, and knocked loudly on the door of the building where they stowed the tuns of recent vintages. "Little scumbag, little scumbag, let me come in," I sing-songed.

For a would-be mob king, Elias wasn't all that physically intimidating: a little balding guy who wore glasses and open-necked shirts and held himself like a gradeschool teacher. His second looked much more the part. But then again, the first time I'd met Marcone, Chicago's Baron had reminded me of a college football coach instead of someone capable of stringing a man up by his toenails. Hendricks was the obvious muscle in that pairing, too. But only a guy with a suicide wish would turn his back on either mobster to face his muscle.

"I suppose this is the part where I'm meant to quote the rest of the nursery rhyme?" Elias replied, opening the door a crack and eyeing me with a faint, disapproving frown. "You must be the magical authorities, then. Some friends of mine suggested you might drop by. Though to tell the truth, I expected you a little sooner."

"Oh, you know how it is," I said nonchalantly, flicking the drape of my grey Warden's cloak aside to ready my shield bracelet. "Big territory, only so many hours in the day. You know what they say: it's the squeaky wheel that gets the grease."

"Is that _that_ what they call it these days." Elias' expression took on a distinct air of amusement. "And how _is_ Gentleman John? Grip as firm as ever? On the Windy City, of course."

I didn't work _for_ Marcone, and never would, but we'd ended up on the same side of a fight more times than I could ever have guessed the day I threw his first job offer back in his face. He'd used that to his political benefit on occasion, and I hadn't kicked up much of a fuss over it, for reasons that had seemed good to me at the time. Given his connections, it wasn't a surprise that Elias had heard the rumors.

"I haven't had any complaints," I said, with a dismissive shrug. 'Complaint' was, after all, far too mild a word for the sort of argument I usually had with Johnny.

"It _is_ quite the territory, if you're responsible for both New York and Chicago," Elias said, in a more conciliatory tone. "My associate has handled my magical security quite admirably, but I could use the resources you could bring as I expand my business, as well. Perhaps we might come to a similar arrangement?"

I tipped my head to the left, making a show of clapping my hand over that ear and shaking it. "I'm sorry, I must have heard that wrong. Or did you miss the part where I called you a scumbag?"

The smile slipped off his face at that. When Marcone loses his affable businessman's façade, he gives off the impression of a tiger on the hunt: ruthless, driven, and top-of-the-food-chain deadly. Elias vibed of scales and poisoned fangs instead; the creepiness of it raised my hackles, though not enough to tempt me to look him in the mind's eye to find out why.

"Now, there's no call for that kind of rudeness," he chided me, dark eyes g one flat. And before he'd even finished speaking, Scarface finally made his presence known, flinging the door wide and unleashing a torrent of fire in my direction.

I smirked and raised my shield hand; fire was no threat to me these days. A dome of iridescent energy snapped into place between us; then I dipped my other hand in a pocket and came up with my blasting rod.

" _Vento reflittum!_ " I called, dashing the fire back in his face. The flames roared like a living thing as they curled back on their caster; Scarface dropped the spell in a hurry and staggered backward, pulling his boss after him.

That put them both back on the other side of the threshold. That would have been a problem if they'd been holed up in a house, with a healthy magical barrier generated by the energy of its inhabitants. But this was a _public_ location.

"Don't mind if I do!" I said, and followed them into the building.

To my surprise, there wasn't anyone else inside; no human goons, no Red Court mooks. Apparently, Elias had been up to Sekrit Bizness there; lucky for me, not so much for him. The fight didn't last much longer; the only casualty was a quantity of splintered, leaking barrels. I washed my hands of Elias, his second, and their hostage, a wary older mobster called Gianni Moretti, with pleasure; the contact I'd been given in the NYPD didn't ask any inconvenient questions, presumably used to New York's equivalent of Special Investigations.

That done, I turned my feet back toward the Library. There hadn't been much time before the briefing to talk, but the longer I'd been around the man who called himself Harold Finch, the more suspicious I'd become about his connection to Ivy. The expression on his face when I talked about her had betrayed a connection that went a lot deeper than that between acolyte and Archive; he seemed to see her as a person before a powerful ancient artifact, and I had to agree with Kincaid, that was something Ivy needed more of in her life.

And there was the bodyguard, too. Between the high-end suit, the blank wall of his face, and the weapons I'd noted on his person, Reese had come off as one of Kincaid's ilk at first glance. But that impression had only lasted until I'd registered the banked fire smoldering just under the controlled surface; he reminded me a bit of Murphy, at her most righteously motivated. It made me wonder what would have happened if I'd brought one of the loose Swords of the Cross to the party.

Potential, Kincaid had said. Yeah, that was one way of putting it. I was definitely going to have to keep tabs on the pair in future. And maybe find out what Reese's real name and lineage might be-- the Swords seemed to have a vaguely feudal sort of the-king-is-the-land type of prerequisite attached to their offers.

That was for the future, though. I tabled the issue as I walked back up the steps to the abandoned building, pausing at the door to look up at the camera. Since I tend to fry sensitive electronics in a wide radius around me without even trying, it seemed only polite to give the Librarian a chance to shut his down before going inside.

A moment later the door opened slightly, revealing the Librarian himself, wearing a small, reserved smile. "Mr. Dresden, come in; I wasn't sure we'd be seeing you again today. John was out attempting to persuade the Dons to accept protection, with little success, when we received the news about your encounter with Elias. He's shadowing Detective Carter on her way back to the precinct now. Mr. Moretti appeared particularly impressed with your intervention; he's refused to say so much as a word about his rescuer."

You team up with one mob boss to save your city, and you pay, and you pay. But the side benefits _were_ occasionally useful. I wondered what Marcone would make of the news from New York, when the rumors made their way back in his direction.

I nodded. "Putting them in jail only solves half the problem, though. The Red Court were investing heavily in Elias' campaign; I need to do some pest control before I go back, or you'll just be facing the same problem again in a few months. Got some time to fill me in on the backstory?"

Finch had led me to a room appointed with a table, a few chairs, and a powered down computer setup; he narrowed his eyes, then sank carefully into one of the chairs, favoring a stiff neck and leg. "I would have assumed you'd gleaned all the information you needed when you retrieved the knife that killed Marlene Elias. Is it her son's backstory you're really asking for, or mine? As I said earlier, I've no need of special consideration; I've scraped by very creditably since I left the Archive's service, and I think it in poor taste to taunt me with the prospect of renewed contact with-- with Ivy-- when I know quite well the White Council will never allow it."

Yeah; there was definitely something deeper there. "What exactly _is_ your relationship to her? The Council might have some say in Ivy's protection while she's still physically underage, but she's not actually a kid; she knows her own mind. They cautioned the hell out of me for befriending her, but they couldn't forbid me from seeing her. What makes you so different?"

Finch pursed his lips, glancing aside. For all that he'd apparently been the original mind behind social media, I got the impression he was a very private guy. Kincaid had told me he was very good with veils, despite his otherwise minimal talent; having met him now, that didn't surprise me at all.

Finally, he looked back at me, courteously focusing his gaze away from my eyes. "Her grandmother and I had... call it a genetic arrangement. If you've been told that the Archive customarily discourages its host from intensities of emotion in order to make the burden of all of recorded human history easier to bear, then you'll understand why it could never have been more than that. But as long as there's been an Archive, she's always known a mother, if no other family. The idea of her alone, an abandoned child...."

He trailed off, looking pained; I stared, jaw agape.

Stars and stones, no wonder Kincaid had called me. He was right that the White Council would discourage Finch's involvement in her life even more stringently than they'd discouraged me. Huh.

"Can I borrow this?" I said, grabbing a marker laid out near the pane of glass he and his partner used as a wipeboard. Then, without waiting for an answer, I wrote:

_Hey Ivy! I met your granddad today. He misses you. How soon can you be in New York?_

Finch stared at me aghast. "Really, Mr. Dresden, I hardly think...."

Before he could finish his sentence, a landline phone suddenly started ringing nearby. Finch startled visibly at the sound, then slowly slid his chair toward it and warily lifted an old-fashioned handset to his ear. He didn't say a word, but I Listened in shamelessly, and easily recognized Kincaid's brusque voice on the other end. 

"Tomorrow. Lunchtime. Tell Dresden to stick around. Oh-- and just so you know, she'd like to meet her step-Reese, too."

" _Step-Reese_?" Finch said faintly in response.

Kincaid chuckled. "You've been missed. She understands. But make sure you show up."

Finch swallowed at the sound of the dialtone, then carefully put down the phone. "Mr. Dresden...."

"Better to ask forgiveness than permission," I shrugged, giving him my best cheeky grin.

A hesitant, hopeful smile began to turn up the corners of his mouth. "I suppose... I've never been one to follow rules for the sake of rules, either."

That settled, he offered me the cot in the back room for the night, then went out to track down Ivy's "Step-Reese". I would have given a lot to hear that conversation, too; but the next day was going to be a long one, and the Library's threshold was surprisingly warm, welcoming, and protective.

Splatting Red Court minions occupied most of the next morning. But I made sure to be back at the Library before lunch, just as a limo rolled up to the curb with Kincaid behind the wheel. 

Ivy was still a few years away from earning her own driver's license. But she wasn't a child anymore, either. She opened the passenger door herself and climbed out, a teenage blonde all slender, coltish limbs in a Sunday-best dress... then froze, staring up at the pair at the Library doors.

Finch took an abortive step toward her, the yearning on his face echoing hers. That was all Ivy needed; she broke free of her paralysis and flung herself at them, clinging to Finch's bespoke suit like a gangly burr.

I looked over at Kincaid and cleared my throat.

"High pollen count today," he said, gruffly.

I nodded, thumbing moisture away from the corner of one eye. "You didn't have to call in a favor for this, you know. I'd have done it for free." I meant it, too; Kincaid's request had brought me to New York, but Elias' own actions had mandated my interference. And _anything_ would have been worth the smile breaking over Ivy's face.

"Better for everyone if the slate's clear. Now there's just the one I owe you."

Supernatural politics. The bane of my wizardly existence. But they'd brought some pretty good things my way, too; I'd never have met Ivy without them.

I watched while she held out a slender hand to Reese, whose stern façade visibly melted under her attention. Then I nodded as she turned to me.

She ignored my attempt to be respectful and flung herself at me, too. 

Yeah, the world was getting darker every year. No disputing that. But all was not lost yet; and in that moment, all was right with my world.


End file.
